Only One Can Wear the Venus Girdle, Part 6 (Ms./Playboy)

Well, obviously, I’ve gotten completely obsessed with Wonder Woman. If you’re just checking in, you can find the rest of my posts on this subject here: One TwoThreeFour Five.

So far the basic thesis I’ve been arguing is that the original Moulton/Peter Wonder Woman was a very odd and original creation, and that nobody else has ever really figured out a way to use the character that isn’t ridiculous or offensive or boring or all three._________________

I’m going to take a slight turn here. I want to talk a little about Wonder Woman’s status as a feminist icon, and how that does or doesn’t really seem to make sense.

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I was aware that WW is generally thought of as a kind of feminist hero; an embodiment of strong, independent, heroic womanhood. I didn’t realize, though, that Gloria Steinem had actually put WW on the cover of the first issue of Ms. in 1972.

Steinem also wrote an essay about how strong and powerful Wonder Woman was, and about…well here’s a quote (taken from this very entertaining post on Comic Coverage:

“Looking back now at these Wonder Woman stories from the forties, I am amazed by the strength of their feminist message…Wonder Woman symbolizes many of the values of the women’s culture that feminists are now trying to introduce into the mainstream.” — Gloria Steinem

Anyway, because WW is supposed to symbolize feminism and female power, there was something of an outcry when this hit the stands, early in 2008

That’s Tiffany Fallon nude, with a Wonder Woman suit painted on her.

Greg Rucka, Wonder Woman writer, said “I’d rather have my daughter see this [the Ms. cover] than ever see that [the Playboy cover.]” And he added “Bastards all. You’ve no idea the damage you’ve done. No idea at all.”

I agree. The cover is a desecration. It goes against everything Charles Moulton believed; everything he stood for. How on earth could Playboy put Wonder Woman on the cover, and not have her tied up?

Slightly more seriously, I do have to wonder how, or what kind of, damage this sort of thing really does. In the first place…you really probably wouldn’t show Playboy to little kids anyway, would you? And in the second, how is this out of sync with Wonder Woman’s image (other than that it’s not bondage, I mean?) WW’s costume is pretty thoroughly sexualized to begin with. I guess you could argue that WW is about her strength and heroism, not her shallow physical charms — but that’s just not true. In fact, shallow physical charms are one of her super-powers. This is from the first issue of WW:

Note all the stuff about Aphrodite? WW’s beauty is, like her strength or her speed, a divine gift (from the God of Love, no less). This has been pretty consistent down through the years, too; she’s still got super-beauty in George Perez’s reboot, for example, and even the dragon notices she’s hot in League of One.

As for me, like I said, I wasn’t surprised by the Playboy thing. It was a cheap shot by the magazine, to be sure. But I would be far more outraged if this happened to Batgirl or Supergirl. To me, Batgirl was always the true feminist superheroine — smart, independent, and under-sexualized. Supergirl was the virginal innocent — originally portrayed as your own kid sister or cousin.

But, Wonder Woman was created by a dude with really strong and weird opinions about women & sex — he referred to women’s vaginas as their “love parts” — and all that baggage couldn’t help but taint that character. Adventurous, resourceful Batgirl is the superheroine I wanted to be. Wonder Woman was half-naked. ….Which is not to say that WW can’t be/has not been redeemed and made into a character that women and girls can truly look up to. But I will finally believe this when she’s no longer drawn by cheesecake artists. I’ll believe it when she’s no longer half-naked.

And yet…though I agree with the argument up to a point, I think D’Orazio’s missing something. After all, Ms. Magazine didn’t put Batgirl on the cover. And that’s in part because nobody except hardcore comics geeks like D’Orazio gives a rats ass about Batgirl. Wonder Woman has more name recognition; she’s got more appeal. In fact, there’s some evidence that Tiffany Fallon is painted to look like Wonder Woman not solely because some guy thought “Wonder Woman is hot” but because, you know, Tiffany Fallon really likes Wonder Woman. As she says:

I’m obsessed with Wonder Woman. I grew up and I had the Wonder Woman Underoos, when Underoos first came out. And I was always a big fan of the show and Lynda Carter. And the older I got, the more I would get these comments like, “My god, you look like Lynda Carter in that picture!” And it doesn’t happen all the time, but I just grew to appreciate her and the character and the campiness of the project. I was Wonder Woman at one of the Playboy Mansion parties, and I just started getting all these comments, like, “My god! You would make a great Wonder Woman!” And I’m like, “You know, I would!” [Laughs]. And so I just have fun with it. And I heard they were starting to make a movie about it, and so I was like, “You know… Stranger things have happened in my life!” You never know. But that would be something I’d be really proud to be a part of.

In other words, WW’s on the Playboy cover for the same reason she’s on the Ms. cover — because girls like her.

Just because women, or some women, or a woman likes something doesn’t necessarily make it feminist or liberating, of course. Pictures of super-thin models are quite popular with girls of all age; does that mean they’re necessarily liberatory? Or is the popularity arguably, from a feminist perspective, perhaps a problem?

Tania Modeleski in her second wave manifesto Feminism Without Women has a great little bit of snark where she points out that often cultural critics fall into a mode of thinking that goes something like: “I am progressive. I like Dynasty. Therefore, Dynasty must be progressive.” I think there’s more than a little of this going on with Gloria Steinem’s decision to put WW on the cover of Ms. I mean, your pilot issue of your feminist magazine, you put a young aggressively sexualized women in a swimsuit on your cover — a women who, moreover, is tricked out in bondage gear (that lasso doesn’t go away)? Yes…sub/domme for President! Especially if she’s been created and, even in this instance, drawn by a man!

(And, of course, the same goes for Fallon and the Playboy cover — she made have had input into the image, and the PR may have talked about how accomplished and wonderful she is, but that doesn’t mean that it’s especially empowering for women as a whole to have this image out there.

Though I’ve gotta say…there seemed to be a fair number of people who were shocked, shocked, shocked that Fallon would dare compare herself to Lynda Carter. I mean…Lynda Carter! I like Lynda Carter fine and all…but she’s a minor celebrity. Fallon’s a minor celebrity. It’s not like Fallon compared herself to Gloria Steinem or something.

Where was I? Oh yeah…)

Still, the question remains…granted that she’s a problematic feminist icon, why do girls like WW? Is it just because they’re all victims of false consciousness and propaganda and can’t tell that she’s an erotic tool of the patriarchal oppressor? Or what?

There are a bunch of reasons that girls might like Wonder Woman I think.

1. One of her powers is super-beauty. Girls are into being pretty. You can argue about whether this is cultural or biological (I lean towards the former) and about whether its unfortunate or not, but it is indisputably true

2. She’s got lots of strong female friendships and relationships. That’s not especially true for, say, Batgirl (except in more recent incarnations) but it’s always been true of Wonder Woman. (Trina Robbins talks about this here, in an essay I may discuss more at some point….)

3. She’s the star. Batgirl is Batman’s assistant; Supergirl is a secondary Superman; Storm’s part of a team, etc. etc., but Wonder Woman in those 40s adventures was the focus of the narrative. And that leads us to:

4. Moulton really did go out of his way to preach self-confidence and self-reliance to women. Say what you will about him, but he thought women were strong and that they should have confidence in themselves. He shows WW and other women beating the tar out of men, outwitting men, and generally overthrowing their oppressors (after being tied up, of course.)

5. She’s a princess.

6. She’s a princess. Duh.

All of the above can be summed up by saying that Moulton’s Wonder Woman really, truly, gratuitously, and effectively pandered to girls in a way very few other American super-hero comics have. Girls have traditionally liked Wonder Woman because it was marketed to them by someone who actually knew what he was doing.

Of course, Moulton was also pandering to his own fetishes. The genius of the character, if you want to call it that, is the way that she plugs into fetishes for men and women a the same time — whether it’s her beauty, or her relationships with other women, or her sub/dom/sub/dom flip-flopping. The story functions both as genre literature for girls and as “fanny” genre literature for guys. As a result, both the Ms. cover and the Playboy cover are logical places for the character to end up.

So where does that leave WW as a feminist icon? Well, about the same place it leaves her as stroke material, I guess. Because while it makes sense to use her in Ms. in some sense, Gloria Steinem still, still looks like kind of a doofus for putting her on the cover. And while Fallon certainly looks hot in those Playboy photographs, the magazine couldn’t resist puffing her as a champion of truth, justice and American Sensuality”, which is just dumb. And, it must be said again, it’s pretty lame to do a porn shoot based on a kid’s comic book and manage to be less kinky than the source material.

I guess we’re back at the thesis for this whole series of posts, which is that using Moulton’s character for your own purposes tends not to work very well (aesthetically I mean — commercially is something else, of course.) Putting WW on the cover made Playboy and Ms. look naive and clueless. You mess with the Amazon, you take your lumps.

Update: Fixed chronology error….

Update: the sage continues, with more on the Ms. cover, among other burblings…

18 Comments

You should look at that Lillian Robinson book, esp. ch. 2. It reviews Moulton’s run and compares its “feminism” to the later bowdlerization. The following chapter(s) look at other female superheroes and how they rarely measured up for a variety of reasons. There’s also some discussion of Ms. and the article in Ms. that came with it.

Not the greatest book, but the only one, I think, with extended treatment of these questions.

I didn’t realize, though, that Gloria Steinem had actually put WW on the cover of the first issue of Ms. in (I believe) 1977.

1972! Check out the billboard on the cover.

About WW and mag covers, I don’t think either Ms. or Playboy misstepped so much. After all, who thinks Ms. was so naive and clueless for putting her up there? Just you. WW worked fine for Ms. and remains a feminist icon. A couple of years ago I met a nice old lady who said she had WW’s picture hanging up in her kitchen, for inspiration. WW is nice and streamlined while still looking like she could throw a punch, and everyone knows about her; thus she’s suited to be a feminist icon. Wearing a swimsuit and having a pervy creator don’t matter so much.

As for Playboy, I guess fangirl feminists don’t like the cover because it makes WW look fuckable, as opposed to glorious. There’s a difference. Fallon comes across as bit of crumpet, whereas WW and Venus are supposedly more cataclysmic in their sex appeal. They’re supposed to overwhelm men.

Or maybe that’s not it, since I’m guessing about other people’s reactions. I mean, feminists just tend not to like Playboy. But the difference I see when I look at the illos is crumpet vs goddess.

I guess I lost my original point … ok, is the Playboy cover such a debacle? I wouldn’t think so. Maybe having her wrapped up in her lariat would have been more true to the source material, but source material is a low priority for non-scholars.

I think WW is a pretty problematic feminist icon any way you look at it. And I don’t think it’s just me. That swimsuit just doesn’t shriek “feminist power.” You use WW to stand in for women, you’re saying women need to look desirable in a pretty stereotypical way. Can she still inspire people? Sure. But the content of images matter, politically and socially.

I don’t think Playboy is a debacle. It caused controversy and made money, which is what they were about. But I think in their justifications for it and in their iconography, they end up looking like fools.

I think you’re arguing that they succeeded popularly…which isn’t really what I’m talking about. I’m saying they’re aesthetic failures; they don’t really work to carry the messages or the impression that they are trying for.

Are you going to watch the upcoming direct-to-DVD animated Wonder Woman movie? It’s probably the closest thing the character will get to mainstream exposure for a while. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

You use WW to stand in for women, you’re saying women need to look desirable in a pretty stereotypical way.

Kind of a touch call. I mean, I just assume Gloria Steinem knows more about picking feminist icons than I do. But it could be that the Ms. use of WW is a case of a minority movement imitating the majority. Men have Superman as their heroic exemplar, and therefore so does the culture as a whole. So the feminists grab on to WW.

Well, obviously there’s got to be a certain amount of patriarchal arrogance on my part in telling an oppressed group who they should choose as their representative symbol. I can’t really defend against that charge; only compound it by saying…I haven’t read a ton of Gloria Steinem, but…compared to a lot of feminist authors, she seems…a bit of a lightweight maybe? I don’t know…maybe this debate will make me go out and read more of her writing, which wouldn’t be a bad thing, but from the bit I know about her, it just doesn’t seem impossible that she might make a not-especially-thoughtful decision or two.

The last thing I read from her she was explaining her support for HIllary Clinton and talking about race and Obama and stuff like that, and she sounded like a fool. She was in a debate with another (black) feminist, who was way, way more together and impressive. And I read part of her Playboy bunny piece from way, way back in the day…which was fine.

This post reminded me that Darwyn Cooke’s New Frontier Special from last year has a short story with Wonder Woman, Black Canary, Bruce Wayne, Jayne Mansfield, and Gloria Steinem set in Gotham City’s Playboy Club circa 1961.

Basically Wonder Woman decides to go to the Playboy Club to teach the men a lesson in equal rights and a fight breaks out. In the process, Wonder Woman’s top catches on fire, (Burning her bra. Get it?) leading to the following exchange:

WW: “Even in defeat, these swine smile and slobber.”Black Canary: “Maybe you should put your top back on.”

gloria steinem was considered a lightweight, as far as i could tell. but a movement needs lightweights as much as it needs intellectuals, or radicals.

feminism in the sixties was by and for straight, white(ish) middle class women, who were used to wearing makeup, thinking about their appearances, & aspiring to stable relationships with men. if it had been lesbian separatism or nothing, you know, it would have been mostly nothing.

you yourself noted that girls (in general) like pretty. i agree that that is probably learned rather than innate, but it's no easier to root out because of that.

it's kind of unfair to say "everything you thought looked nice? that is just men's wank material, so you can't have it. here, have ol' hatchet-face susan b. anthony."

i can't believe that a first cover of ms. with susan b. anthony could really excite budding feminists as they passed it in a newsstand. (should people learn about & respect susan b. anthony more than wonder woman? sure. but as donald rumsfeld would say, you smash the patriarchy with the feminists you have, not the feminists you want.)

think of the two biggest mainstream woman-power icons: wonder woman & rosie-the-riveter "we can do it!". rosie's wearing lipstick, & has the kind of hair, even under her kerchief, that takes hours. i think it's *because* these women are evil beauty-myth-buying, men-appeasers that straight women can identify with them (although i gotta say i always liked norman rockwell's big strapping michaelagelean rosie best).

Speaking of Trina Robbins, i think she (and Kurt Busiek?) wrote a Golden-Age homage miniseries WW just before the Perez reboot. I don’t remember it well enough to comment but you might find it interesting.

I think it’s true that movements need lightweights…or at least popularizers, which doesn’t have to be the same thing, but often functionally is.

I think WW’s semi-nudity and much-touted beauty puts more emphasis on female bodies than you might really want for Ms. — but maybe I pushed that a bit too far in the comment. I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with putting a young, attractive woman on the cover of your feminist magazine. I think Rosie the Riveter as an icon was pretty clever, actually — I don’t have anything to say against her.

Again, though, WW is really problematic, though, because of her history and her costume, and I think that cover is a mess for a lot of other reasons as well. I’m hoping to revisit the cover later in the week maybe and talk a little more why I think it doesn’t work….

I think it’s fair to say that the pop culture Wonder Woman is almost completely divorced from her Golden Age roots, and from any other comics portrayal of her for that matter. Tell anyone (including Gloria Steinem, I imagine) that the original conception of Wonder Woman involved bondage and submission philosophy, or that her origin story involves a Herculean rapefest, and I imagine they’d be pretty surprised.

It is, of course, no help to anyone trying to write a Wonder Woman comic or movie that she is such a popular meme or icon, because none of that has anything much to do with her character, setting or whatever else. It’s like trying to write a story starring the Nike swoosh or the Lolcats.

I don’t think the mere carrying of a lasso is enough to connote bondage fantasy – cowboys traditionally carry them too! But even if it was, lasso bondage doesn’t scrape the surface of the weirdness of Golden Age Wonder Woman. That’s what I think the iconic status of Wonder Woman has drifted almost completely away from – though once writers actually sit down to make a story out of that icon, all the problems do come flooding back as you’ve discussed in previous posts of this series. I just don’t think it’s particularly problematic for non-narrative depictions as in Ms or Playboy, because most people only know Wonder Woman in that non-narrative context.

I’m going to talk a bit more about the ms cover in the next post, as I said. I think I was probably wrong in attributing the playboy cover’s problems to WW. I still think it’s stupid — but it’s stupid in the way Playboy in general is stupid. I don’t know that WW made all that much difference…except maybe to emphasize their general vacuousness…and some of the interior pictures do look more silly and uncomfortable than sexy….